Patent GB-415498-A (GB)
Title: Improvements in or relating to record-card operated printing machines
Filed: 1933-03-17
Abstract: 415,498. Typewriters &c. CHAMBERLAIN, S. B., St. Luke's Printing Works, Old Street, London. March 17, 1933, No. 8150. [Class 100 (iv).] Record-controlled driving-mechanism; relay type-wheel actions.-In a machine of the kind in which there are provided for each type-member a nest of sliders each of which is capable of limited relative movement with respect to its neighbour through distances increasing in geometric progression for the several sliders, locking-devices to lock each slider immovably with its neighbour and to be unlocked under the control of the record, and means tending to move an end slider with respect to the others as permitted by the unlocking of the sliders and to move or to control the selective movement of the type-member according to the total relative movement of the sliders, the sliders are mounted one upon another and are relatively slidable all in the same plane under control of the record to determine the selective movement of the type member. The records may be suitably marked to co-operate with electric contact or light-sensitive reading means or may be perforated, and these are passed through any suitable reading means which may comprise a vertically moving carriage having six pins for each group of hole positions of the record card, which are spring- pressed upwards and can engage, through perforations, plungers mounted above which serve through mechanical or electromagnetic means to operate strikers 49, Fig. 3 and 5. These are arranged in groups corresponding to the groups of hole positions in the record card and each group is associated with sliders 30 .. 35 and a type-wheel 17. The sliders 30 .. 35 are in the form of six concentrically arranged annular members, rotatable relatively to one another and to the hub 20, which is fixed to the shaft 19, and the sliders and hub are connected together by teeth 27 and slots 28, so that the slider 35 can move relatively to the slider 34 through a space corresponding to one tooth 26, provided on the slider 35, while the sliders 33, 34 have a relative movement equal to twice, the sliders 32, 33 equal to four times this movement, and so on, so that the hub and slider 30 can move relatively through thirty-two times this movement. Relative movement to any desired extent is permitted to the sliders, which are normally locked in position, by operating the appropriate strikers 49, and this is imparted to the type-wheel 17 by the spring-operated rack 40 which meshes with the teeth 26, which in turn engage the teeth of the type wheel, and by employing suitable strikers any one of the sixty-three characters on the wheel 17 may be brought into operative position. The locking- means for the sliders comprises a pivoted spring-pressed latch 42, Fig. 5, which is carried by a slider such as 34 and normally abuts against the wall 44 of a recess 45 on the next outer slider 35. The latch also carries a pivoted detent 46 which normally engages the opposite wall 47 of the recess, but which is depressed by the striker 49 and engages beneath the inner wall of the slider 35, thereby withdrawing the side of the latch 42 from the abutment 44 and holding it therefrom until the relative sliding movement has taken place. The strikers 49 are connected to the detents on the inner sliders by distance-pieces 57 so that free relative movement of the sliders is permitted. The rack 40 is returned by a cam. According to the Provisional Specification, the sliders may be in the form of bars arranged one above the other in a stack connected together similarly to the discs 30 .. 35 and each provided with a head so arranged that when the stack is closed up, the heads lie side by side in a row. The first head carries a detent which locks it to the second, the detent forming the armature of an electromagnet for disengaging it and unlocking the first and second heads. The second head is similarly united to the third and so on, and the last bar is formed as a rack to operate a pinion on the type-wheel shaft, and the latter is controlled by a spring which tends to rotate it and thereby the bars to the opened-out position. The operation of the electromagnets is controlled as before by the perforated card. Alternatively, the sliders may be in the form of concentric tubes, slidable within one another or capable of relative rotation, or of a row of discs mounted on a single shaft and relatively rotatable, and the type-wheel may be operated by a chain, tape &c. which is coiled round a drum fixed to the type wheel-shaft, instead of by the rack and pinion. Specification 19553/03, [Class 40], is referred to.